The Power of “Enoughness”
Enough is a powerful concept. Acknowledging that we have enough can keep us whole. By contrast, constantly striving for more can make us feel less than complete.
Tracy Theemes explains her journey discovering the power of enough:
A few years back when we were working to open this business in the midst of a financial crisis, and I was struggling with some things in my personal life, I had an insight; what had happened to me in my past had brought me to where I was. Exactly what needed to happen had happened. I started this mantra; I am enough, I have enough, it is enough.
I saw this idea — of being and feeling adequate — in many of our high net worth clients. They weren’t always striving for some invisible abundance idea that’s off in the distance. They were enmeshed in their own sufficiency. I started talking about the idea of enough in the financial classes I was teaching, and it annoyed a lot of people. I got push back that, ironically, enough isn’t a good enough goal.
“If we‘re always looking for abundance and prosperity, by definition, we want more. As soon as we want more than what we have, we‘ve created a gap. And what’s in the gap? Insufficiency.”
Taking stock and appreciating what we already have is the first part of enough. The second part is recognizing that enough will produce more “enoughness.” We have to acknowledge the adequacy of where we are now. We can’t skip adequacy and jump straight to abundance.
I also think there’s work that can be done on the outside. Clients say, “Okay, I am enough, I have enough, but how the hell am I going to get ahead?” I try to help them figure out how they can be peaceful with their finances and still map out a plan. This is where financial planning comes in.
Kamal Basra knows that enough has a number, and she knows how to crunch it.
If we’re to feel secure in our idea of enough, we need to know what planning for “more enoughness” actually means. Kamal talks us through the steps to finding our personal place of enough:
We start off with where you are now; what do you own, what do you owe, what savings do you have? And what is it that you want to achieve? The answers to these questions create specific goals. Then, we do the analysis to bring the idea of enough into the realm of the practical.
“There might be a wide gap between where you want to be in the future and where you are right now. The analysis becomes a tracking system, like the GPS in your car.”
It allows people to realize where they are on the continuum, and how much progress they’ve made on the road to reaching their goals. The numbers make it doable. We move the idea of enough from the philosophical to the practical.
We know that it’s easy to get lost on the way to acknowledging adequacy and finding our enough number. Tracy’s journey required reciting her enough mantra 1350 times in one day to just stave off a panic attack! But when she persevered, and owned the belief that she was enough, she had enough, and it was all enough, she stepped right over the abundance gap, and into powerful sufficiency. And so can you.
Listen to Wise Money Moves Podcast, Episode 2, to hear Tracy and Kamal talk about “how much is enough”.
